Agriculture Business Week

Filipino Consumers prefer garlic produced in the Ilocos Region, particularly in Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur, because of its more pungent and aromatic odor as well as it tangy taste.

However, the Ilocos Region produces only 65 percent or 9,551.94 metric tons (MT) of the country’s average total production of 14,695.29 MT even as the agro-climatic conditions in Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur are suitable for garlic production.

Moreover, the country’s total production is not enough to meet domestic consumption. For one thing, the Philippines imports annually an average of 164,881.35 MT of fresh and chilled garlic as condiments. In short, the total production does not even satisfy 9 percent of the domestic demand.

Even if we attain the optimum potential yield of garlic, which is 9 tons per hectare (t/ha), we would produce only 28.45 percent (46,898.19 MT) of our yearly imports from a total garlic area of 5,210.9 ha. A major reason for our appallingly low production is our low average yield of 2.81 t/ha. This yield level is not even one-third of the potential yield.

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Posted on November 26th, 2008 under Technology, Vegetables. Tags: Garlic, Veggies. Comments: None

Potatoes may be known as food of the hard up but its nutritive values can most certainly make any poor man rich - in health that is.

Freshly harvested, it contains about 80 percent water and 20 percent dry matter. About 60 to 80 percent of the dry matter is starch. On a dry weight basis, the protein content of potato is similar to that of cereals and is very high compared with other roots and tubers.

“Potatoes are rich in several micronutrients, especially vitamin C - eaten with its skin, a single medium-sized potato of 150 grams provides nearly half the daily adult requirement (100 milligrams),” says the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

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Posted on November 23rd, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Potato, Veggies. Comments: None

Only a few people know that malunggay grows well in sandy loam soil. An Ilokano farmer is one of these few people. He has transformed a wasteland with sandy loam soil in Barangay Salapasap, Cabugao, Ilocos Sur into a malunggay plantation, and he have been earning a lot from it.

In 1972, when the Green Revolution was just beginning, Antonio Solima, now 69, bought a 1.3-hectare wasteland along the coast of the China Sea not really knowing that the land would be a virtual “goldmine”. The only vegetation seen in the area was what the locals call kandaroma, a bushy evergreen plant with lots of thorny, intertwining branches which usually grows along the coastline.

For this reason, it was very unlikely for a person in the right mind to invest even P0.22 per square meter for this kind of land 35 years ago, but. Antonio proceeded anyway to make a gamble with his P3,000 savings. Since all he wanted then was to own a land.

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Posted on November 22nd, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Malunggay, Veggies. Comments: 2

Vegetable farmers in the mountainous areas of Carranglan, Nueva Ecija can now bring their produce to the road side fast and easy, as an agricultural tramline was turned over recently by BPRE Executive Director Ricardo L. Cachuela to the municipal government.

The agricultural tramline is an alternative transport system that facilitates efficient delivery of agricultural products at reduced cost from production areas to the market.

Carranglan Mayor Luvimindo Otic received the agricultural tramline in behalf of his constituents and expressed his gratitude for its establishment in his municipality. “This technology is badly needed in our place,” he said.

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Posted on November 20th, 2008 under Farming, Vegetables. Tags: Farming, Veggies. Comments: None

Bohol used to be a big importer of a lot of vegetables such as tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, squash and others mostly from Northern Mindanao. These days, some are still sourced from outside the province but that may not continue sooner than most people think. It won’t be surprising if the is and province will soon become an exporter of its own high quality vegetables, especially to the big market in Cebu.

The reason is that growing high-yielding hybrid vegetables is becoming increasingly popular in the province as more and more farmers are discovering that there is big money in growing such varieties.

The increasing popularity of high yielding vegetables can be gauged by the volume of sales of planting materials in the last few years. One seed firm, East-West Seed Company, for instance, has tremendously increased its sales in the last three years. For example, the company sold only P400,000 worth of seeds in 2006. In 2007, the value topped P1.2 million while this year the company is well on its way to sell at least P2 million worth of seeds. Of course, East-West Seed is just one of the suppliers of vegetable seeds in the province. At least three other seed companies are also selling their own varieties there.

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Posted on October 15th, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Bohol, Mindanao, Veggies. Comments: None

Many farmers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are practicing Palavamanan or integrated farming. Among them are the farmers in Barangav Sultan Kudarat, Pigcawayan, Shariff Kabunsuan. They are ever grateful that such a technology was introduced to them because if not for it, their farm income would not increase.

Indeed, these farmers have all the good reasons to say so since they are now earning much from vegetable production. “What PhilRice and JICA taught us is beautiful because it has helped us improve our livelihood,” says 55-year-old Maudti Ali.

Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) introduced the Palayamanan concept to the Muslim farmers through a technical cooperation project in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries of ARMM (DAF-ARMM). Among the agencies cooperating in the implementation of the project is the University of Southern Mindanao through its Pagkain Para sa Masa program.
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Posted on October 13th, 2008 under Rice, Vegetables. Tags: Mindanao, Palaymanan, PhilRice, Veggies. Comments: None

Talk about Quezon City and one would think of cars, buses, trains, and tower-high, classy buildings. It seems that there’s no room for farming, but there are few who succeeded and one of them is Bernabe Atenta.

Using only chicken dung as fertilizer, he has been raising pechay, mustard, lettuce, beans, spinach, and other vegaables in the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Stud Farm. Mang Bebe as his neighbors and friends call him. is proud of his profitable vegetable garden because if not for it, he wouldn’t afford the education of his children. His daughter Amelita is now a nurse, his son Joel has a degree in computer science, and his daughter Maribel is taking up tourism.

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Posted on October 1st, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Farmer, Gardening, Veggies. Comments: None

Cabbage Farmers may as well plant either tomato or garlic around their cabbage crop to reduce damages caused by diamondback moth (DBM), Hellula, cutworms, and other harmful insect pests. This practice is called companion planting.

Lucrecia Cocson and Lagrimas Flojo, researchers of the Mariano Marcos State University [MMSU] in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, found in a three year study that companion planting with tomato or garlic results in higher marketable yields and, hence, higher net income from cabbage.

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Posted on September 28th, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Cabbage, Disease, Garlic, Pest, Veggies. Comments: None

On our way to users of Durabloom bio-organic fertilizer in Cabanglasan, Bukidnon, we passed by several farmers loading large squash fruits in a cargo truck bound for Cagayan de Oro City.

The size of the fruits attracted us to take some photos and interview the farmers who said the variety they used could yield 13 to 30 tons a hectare. That’s great! Given the current farm gate price of P3.50 a kilo, the farmers get a gross income of P45,500 to P105,500 per hectare.

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Posted on September 27th, 2008 under Vegetables. Tags: Squash, Veggies. Comments: None